Hints of the Higgs boson detected last year by a US “atom smasher” have become even stronger, scientists have said. The news comes amid fevered speculation just two days before an announcement by researchers at the Large Hadron Collider.

Finding the particle would fill a glaring hole in the widely accepted theory of how the Universe works. This 30-year hunt is reaching an end, with experts confident they will soon be able to make a definitive statement about the particle’s existence. The latest findings have come from analysis of data gathered by the US Tevatron particle accelerator, which was shut down at the end of last year.